Man, I hate debates. Honestly, they serve no purpose 99.9% of the time. Most religious debates talk about random concept and they spin around to talk about random terms and be like “I KNOW THIS” blah blah blah.
But, when discussing religion, as a concept, you have to deal with humanity. I think that’s the funny part about when people talk about The Qur’an.
I came to The Qur’an from a place of skepticism. Honestly.
The thing is, it’s when you deal with humanity, on the day-to-day, you begin to see what religion is really for: it’s for people.
When I say that, it seems obvious, but I think my biggest gripe with intellectualism is its wondrous ability to discuss humanity but not people. The dichotomy between these two concepts is that humanity can be celebrated in film, but equally demonized in the same medium. Humanity can be described in evolutionary terms, like Noam Chomsky does with linguistics, with great insight.
But people? The study of people is the means of understanding religion. To talk about religion as “mythology” is missing the point, particularly when you’re dealing with The Qur’an.
The Qur’an’s main purpose is not mythology, and it’s not cosmology. God is like basically like “I made stuff, and I created everything, blah blah blah, okay, let me show you some examples about life!”
To talk about Prophets as people who clung to fantasies that they are inspired by some mythical creature of their imagination ignores people.
Religion is transformative in ways that “science” (in the limited medium understood in the Western tradition [since it’s really inconvenient that Islamic scholars invented the scientific method and algebra and chemistry and blah blah blah]) can never be. Why? Because religion deals with people, not humanity.
Moses emerges in a certain socio-political reality, as did Jesus, as did Muhammad, as did Buddha, as did any religious leader, in any time.
If it was simply about enforcing power, you’d have religion coming from the rulers, but if you look at the Prophets in The Qur’an, for example, you don’t see that. Moses is part of an ethnic group being systematically murdered (genocide) by Pharaoh, who is then raised to oppose that power from within. Jesus stands up to power for the lepers (literally, lepers) of society. Muhammad is an orphan (the lowest rung of society) who advocates that people are equal in a racist society, and that class is a constructed and destructive system in a society bent on social and material inequities.
These experiences are not new, and unfortunately, are still very real in our own societies. They are real in Egypt, and in France, in the least and most developed of nations, whether they have religion or not, because people are people through other people, but humanity–as this concept in our brains–is a projection of our worldviews.
To serve people, on the other hand, requires study of people. It’s why I value the study of the law so much, because you are systematically adjudicating how to deal with people grievances with each other, how do you mitigate their conflict, and how do you get around people saying what morality is, and seeing how they live their morality when it comes time for a divorce, or dealing with their kids, or dealing with their businesses.
When we discuss humanity, we talk about war, peace, and grandiosity, because this is how we define ourselves, and we attach meaning to humanity, without empirical evidence. We discount salient factors of people, we discount interests, greed, and we fail to discuss political objectives, because we’re talking about “humanity.”
Our misanthropy is really rooted in our selected individualized experiences, rather than our committed exploration of people, for people requires interaction and effort, which discussions of humanity do not require. It’s like swearing off TV shows about… I dunno, gangsters (just watched Peaky Blinders) because your sparse experiences with a terrible gangster show–let’s say they made a gangster show about Barney’s founding of a biker gang–and your aversion to gangster shows would make sense.
But we’re not talking about aversions based on bad experiences, we’re talking about studying stuff.
So when I hear a very serious and very intelligent scientist talk, on and on about what is empirically true and verifying information, and “science” (like every Muslim isn’t in some scientific field, c’mon man) but then, when it comes to this human experience, this human interaction, called religion, suddenly, the empiricism ends. No data is cited. The Spock of rationality is gone, and now there are serious questions over “well, what about Shariah law” when in but moments ago, there was debate over definitions of infinity and what defines causality.
If you want to understand religion, serve people. You want to see why people can admire someone like The Prophet Muhammad? Listen to people’s problems. Listen to people’s problems when you’re sick. Listen to people’s problems when your heart is torn up. Serve people.
Then you’ll understand what The Qur’an talks about. Then you’ll see what it’s focus is about, not just because the majority of it really doesn’t deal with cosmology (which would be evident from a cursory glance) but because in The Qur’an the ultimate proof of our faith is not prayers (that’s a part of it) but interactions with people.
Look at this ayah from The Qur’an [2:177]
“True piety does not consist in turning your faces towards the east or the west - but truly pious is he who believes in God, and the Last Day; and the angels, and revelation, and the prophets; and spends his substance - however much he himself may cherish it - upon his near of kin, and the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer, and the beggars, and for the freeing of human beings from bondage; and is constant in prayer, and renders the purifying dues; and [truly pious are] they who keep their promises whenever they promise, and are patient in misfortune and hardship and in time of peril: it is they that have proved themselves true, and it is they, they who are conscious of God.”
The majority of God’s declaration of what defines piety isn’t about where our faces turn to in prayer, but in what we do.
So, we must ask ourselves, if we believe in God, what does that translate into, practically speaking, in regards to our actions? Not just to those we like, but more importantly, to those we dislike?
How can we talk about hating humanity, when we use social networking platforms to broadcast our hatred of humans, to other humans, waiting for interactions from other humans, about our hatred of humans?
Or worse, how can we talk about “common sense” or “rationality” when dealing with experiments and quantum mechanics, but then suspend those same values when dealing with humanity, instead, resorting to random appeals to some sort of “arbiter of truth” that is “science” when dealing with people?
How does “science” deal with marginal tax rates? How about the appropriate tax rate for capital gains taxes on Real Estate income? Should it be at the marginal rate of 20%? Or should we increase it to the 43ish% rate? Or the 39ish% on normal taxable income? What does “science” say about the importance of tax incentives for commercial real estate development? Or no fault divorce?
You see, talking about “science” is nice, I like science, my whole family are scientists, I have scientists friends (there is a not-so-subtle joke here) but the reality is, when it comes down to the law, people show their true colors. I hate acting like my field of study is like “the final word on THINGS! YEAH! FREEZE FRAME HIGH FIVE!” And everyone does that, myself included, and I realize I have the persuasive ability to make a strong case for my field to be that, but, in this discussions, on people, the law is the ultimate study of what people do when there are consequences.
It’s just that law deals with humanity in a raw form. I’ll give you an example: whenever I see an academic, I look at their outfits. I always wonder: did they take the time to pick out the outfit? Or did they just send their spouse out to pick up some Costco Kirkland stuff (who doesn’t like Costco?) and their appearance be damned? Because behind all of our platitudes and “research” is a person.
People talk about ideas, but at the same time, desperately chase credit for it. They want to be recognized. We have insecurities. We have fears. We want to look good and choose navy over orange, because it suits us more, or so we think.
I imagine doctors see that rawness in people when they are facing something horrific. Maybe that’s why my discussions with my roommate (a doctor) about people consists of swapping stories of people’s ridiculousness. Because it’s a reminder of what people do as opposed to what people say.
It’s fine and dandy to talk about what’s common sense in a lecture hall. It’s very different to do that when you’re facing the dilemma of morality in front of you. And I guess that’s my problem, because when you’re talking about people, and you want to do so intelligently, you’re going to have to study people, and whatever those people value.
The thing is, when Islam comes up, and since it seems that most debates against Islam come from white male scientists, they try and put Islam and religious Muslims in the same box as they have with conservative Americans. It’s what they know, it’s what they’ve been exposed to.
But Muslims don’t function in those parameters. We’re different people. With different histories, socially and institutionally. It’s not that we’re exceptional, it’s just that we’re not subject to the constraints of history that you were taught was “humanity.” You were taught that “humanity” was just white people, where there can be actual celebration of “liberalism” as a concept that literally pretends that slavery and colonization didn’t happen or “wasn’t that bad.” And yet, we’re going to talk about empiricism and observable data?
So why do I love the law? Because it constantly forces me to try to understand, to the best of my limited abilities, the person in front of me. I manage my client’s expectations and risk factors, to get to the best possible outcome. And honestly, that’s what Islamic scholars have been doing since the start. How do we manage expectations and risk for people so that they can flourish? Based on what? Dealing with people on the daily.
